Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age with Charles Adaikkalam – Techstrong Unplugged EP15

Hey everybody, and welcome back to Techstrong Unplugged. I'm your host De Jen Solomon, and this is episode 15 of our series. In this episode, we're taking you to the great International Developer Summit, also known as gid 2024.

At gid, our co-host Cassandra Chin met up with Charles Koum and they discussed the creation and development of Zoho creator, which helps users build apps without extensive coding knowledge. Then Charles talks about the importance of privacy in today's digital world. Without further ado, let's it over to GID 2024.

Welcome back to Text Run Unplugged. I'm your host, Cassandra Chin, and today we have Charles with us here. Hello, Cassandra, Can you introduce yourself?

Yeah. Um, I'm Charles at Ilum. Uh, I'm the director of product management at Zoho.

So I've been with Zoho for the past 23 years. Um, so, and I am managing a product named Zoho creator and Zoho Flow. So how did you get started into technology?

Yeah, so, uh, I, my education is not from technology. I'm a mechanical engineer by education. So, uh, Zoho recruited me out of campus just based on some AP tests.

I didn't know what I was going to do back in 2001, what kind of job? I didn't know. So I just went there and joined Zoho and I was put into coding and, uh, the kind of satisfaction it gave me really, it, it, it kind of, it was, it was more thrilling.

Um, I had the complete satisfaction in, whenever I started learning more about programming, it was really good. And, um, in the beginning it was pretty tough, but then it was really a fun moment enjoying technology. So you said you learned mechanical engineering, so like did you go from no coding experience to coding on the job?

Um, not exactly. Um, yes, even though I was a mechanical engineer, I had learned a little bit of basic programming in my school, but it was very, very light and, um, and when I got inside the company, so they asked me to learn Java. Um, so it was, uh, all like, uh, I didn't know any, any, any of these things.

I was asked to learn myself, like there was no trainer or sort of thing, so I had to learn everything by myself. But that one thing, learning by yourself, it really, um, helped me a lot, even in, in future things as I started a product in 2005. So it was in 2000.

From 2001, um, I got into some of the, uh, um, Java projects and the company. So I started programming and then I led a, a small team in a year or two. Uh, then in 2005 was when our, uh, CEO was either wibu.

Uh, he spoke about the, uh, long tail of obligations where, uh, we could create a platform wherein people like with less coding knowledge or with absolute no coding knowledge, we can, they create applications, uh, with limited knowledge probably they may be very strong in their, uh, departments, probably they may be very strong in their, um, uh, uh, industry, uh, but they don't have the time and the, they can't make efforts to learn all the technical stat that they have to make to create a software. Uh, so we don't, we built a platform that could enable and empower people, um, to build softwares. So that was way back in 2005.

Uh, that's how I started. Zo created. How exactly does the application work?

Yeah, so this is a platform where it's, uh, it helps you, uh, build applications visually. Um, it's a no-code application platform in the beginning to start with. And then as you go further, whenever you would need, uh, uh, to write a specific business logic, then we have a very lightweight script language called deluge that was again, developed by us, uh, very, very lightweight scripting language, uh, which you could use to, um, write your workflows.

You Said it's no code, is it like a visual editor or, Yes, it's like a visual editor. As you just get inside the application, uh, you just need to drag and drop certain blocks, so where instantly you'll be able to get an application not only on the web, there will be a mobile application asset that is autogenerated immediately in, in few minutes, actually within like five to 10 minutes, you'll be able to create a production, a decent amount of production based application, which otherwise would've taken like days or weeks to set up all the infrastructure, the backend, the front end, the database, and so on. I think a lot of challenges of coding is actually the logic part of it.

Yes. And people get scared off by the coding barrier. Yes.

So that really helps with that. Yes, yes, definitely. And also even with coding, right?

We have a, uh, uh, very visual way of writing code as well. Uh, it's just like if you are a pro coder, you can get into the console, then start typing the code as you are in, uh, in a typical other environments. Then we also have a drag and drop of syntax where you can just simply drag and drop and then it gives you all the correction and everything.

It's very easy to learn as well. Uh, the coding using, uh, zoo creator, Did that help you learn coding a little bit to work on it? Yeah, I'm saying like, uh, I started this platform after learning, uh, very hard to learn coding.

I learned coding in a hard way, but this, uh, application or this platform was mainly, uh, uh, aimed towards helping people build applications on their own. After going through like a really tough time learning how to code. Did you feel like you had a passion for getting others involved into coding?

Um, yes, of course. Like, because like, um, people come with some sort of passion or some sort of curiosity. Okay.

Each people, I believe that they have some talent to work on. So my job would be to unearth that talent and then make sure that I put on the right path or right, uh, work job so that they enjoy the work and also do some coding. And I think you're giving a talk here.

Yes. I gave, uh, uh, the keynote about, I spoke about the tech stack at Zoho where, um, I spoke in detail about, uh, what are the technology stack here at Zoho, um, how we are very, very privacy focused and how it is useful, um, uh, uh, to have the maximum control by ourselves so that you get a privacy focused text chat out of Zoho. So this is about how you built your own text chat.

Yes, yes, yes. So back in 2005, um, we started building our own data centers. We started building our own network, uh, infrastructure.

Uh, we built our own hardware infrastructure. We built our own software infrastructure to make sure that, uh, we have that control over overall infrastructure that we own. So that should give the certainty to the customers so that like in future, like if there is any problem, we make sure that we own up that problem and then we fix them.

We give the highest priority for anything that happens. Then we don't do a blame game saying like, oh, that's with another vendor, so uh, just wait, or something like that. We don't have to do that.

I always hear that privacy is important, but why actually should I care about it? How does it affect me? Yeah.

So in this world, actually, if you see, uh, anywhere you go, right? Uh, a lot of data is being collected over you. You get into social media or even into business softwares that are a lot of business software as well who attacking you.

And then, uh, make sure that like, um, they, they try to even cross all other products actually, uh, even they try to sell your business data to other people, or they use even your business leader to train for AI actually. So this is a very, very, uh, uh, careful thing that everyone needs to, uh, take care. So before you sign up for any software product, you need to see what is that business model, whether, uh, you need to go and then see all the fine prints about the terms and conditions.

It's very, very important because, so once it is out, they, they kind of, uh, they use your own data to, uh, make money, and that's really not good. Actually. The terms and conditions are so long to read though, and I think it's really hard to actually understand it all.

Yeah. So if you really see, um, I, we respect, uh, apple in that way actually. Um, they, uh, uh, we consider them to be a role model in terms of privacy and even we have a tag called Choose Privacy, choose zo.

Um, and uh, we, we are trying to follow the Apple model where they care a lot about privacy. Even if you go go on browser website in Safari browser, uh, there's something called a privacy report. You can go and see, even if it's very, uh, you are finding it very difficult to go and read the terms and conditions in a website, you can simply click on that privacy report and see, uh, how many trackers are being used in that website.

Okay. So that's a very good indicator to find out, um, how much information and data that they are taking out of it. So those a good, uh, tool that I would suggest we can go and check it out yourself.

I never realized that there were tools like that to, let me see how many people are tracking me. Yeah, it's, it's a really good tool actually. com and see how many trackers are being used for yourself.

You would find none. So when they take my data, where does it go? Um, it really depends actually.

Um, it is used sometimes, uh, people use it to display advertisement. That is like, say for example, uh, you go to a, a pizza shop and then get something, you travel and you use maps for that. So kind of they know the complete in and out of you actually.

So what happens is that like they sell those data to, uh, businesses that are interested, uh, with those data, and then they psychologically they make you buy more and more products out of it. So that's how they do that business model. But can that be a sort of positive thing?

Because if they don't track you at all, they will still display advertisements? Yeah, but if they dis but there should be a option to, uh, turn off all those things. Because what I'm saying is like they, they, they go after, even if you are trying to turn off, there are other ways to find out who you are about because maybe you are in social media, you these days, like you cannot be completely out of social media as well.

So somehow with the public data that is available, they will try to show the data. Um, do you think they farm data off of social media posts or other information to learn about you? I'm sorry?

Do you think they farm data off of social media posts to learn about individuals? Yes, of course. Definitely.

Because all these data are available in public, they can definitely, uh, uh, uh, find or form, um, or a complete, uh, thing about you actually. Are there any other cases where we should be wary of? Um, I would say like, um, be aware of, uh, uh, the, uh, social media companies and maybe other, uh, uh, uh, things.

I mean, whichever is offering for free, especially. Right. Whenever something is offered for free look for fine print, um, they could be tracking you.

I'll be wary of that in the future. Yes. Probably my information is already out there.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're building this text app because you really value privacy.

Yes. Yes. So how do you actually protect privacy through your app?

Um, the way we do is like, like a tool, right? Um, we own our own tech stack, so we have that pretty much bigger control. So like I said earlier, uh, we don't sell data to other third party, uh, companies or we don't ever display any advertisement or we don't do any double dipping, which is like make use of customer's data, uh, to do a revenue elsewhere.

And any of our division or directly or indirectly is not involved in ad-based business model. We only cater to, even in our free, uh, we, we offer a lot of free products, so we want only people to use our free products so that like, uh, by use of word and mouth, they go and spread about our, our products. So we use only for that.

Um, otherwise we don't use any of the data out of the free products, any of the user data and try to sell it anywhere else. Do You know any examples of other tech apps which use our data? Yes, of course.

I mean, for example, I don't want to specifically name, but there are a lot of big vendors, uh, that are definitely, that are involved in the ad business. Asmu offer business softwares. So on one hand they're involved in the advertisement business as a model, which is generating a lot of revenue.

On the other hand, they're also selling, uh, softwares for the businesses. So definitely there are a lot of linking, especially in chat GPD we saw that, uh, initially they were telling like, uh, there was a very small fine print that told like we may be using, and then they, uh, when there was a lot of uh, um, uh, people, when a lot of people they noted about that and then they challenged it in the social media, then they slowly removed it and then they put it again. I think we learned a lot about data and privacy today.

Yes. Yes. So we had a really good chat.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Cassandra.